Costs of Healthcare in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area

The Pittsburgh healthcare system includes two large integrated financing and delivery systems. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) operates eight hospitals in the city of Pittsburgh and more than thirty hospitals throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In addition, UPMC operates the UPMC Health Plan, which provides coverage to approximately three million Pennsylvania residents. The second system includes seven hospitals in Western Pennsylvania and is owned by a large provider of health coverage.

This paper has been prepared to better understand how the presence of these two large integrated financing and delivery systems have affected healthcare costs in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. The paper compares Pittsburgh’s costs to US healthcare costs and to costs in other cities and metropolitan areas.

Three issues are addressed:

• Health insurance premiums for family coverage
• Medicare expenditures per beneficiary
• Hospital costs

Support for this research was provided by the UPMC Health Plan.